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A feature-complete pure microkernel architecture OS isn't written in a weekend by a single person and I'm honestly optimistic about them looking at that article and considering how fast their pace is compared to the HURD. I think the key difference is that Minix3 seems to have direction in its development, which HURD utterly lacks.

Linux, which is just yet another monolithic UNIX-like system, that is, an old, well-known and proven system design, took over 20 years to get to the point where it is now. In contrast, Minix3 is a pure microkernel architecture, a field where there's a lot of research going on, so what they've done in just a few years with few contributors is pretty commendable.

....and they also finally ditched brand-new a.out format! Oh, really decent changelogs for 2013. Looks like if necromancers got their own OS with some recent innovations, eh?

Minix has its own filesystem (MFS) but of course supports a few other popular FSs for interoperability, EXT2 being one of them. AHCI has been there for at least three years and the change is that it's used by default now, as until now the well-tested legacy IDE driver was preferred instead. Linux still supports a.out. Minix3 has supported ELF for a long time.

I'm pretty sure necromancers will keep their jobs at least while we still rely on UNIX-like systems, dating to the early 70s. These senile old systems will panic and die at the slightest bug on any driver. When there's so much driver code and the bug density in driver code is so high, it's a wonder the necromancers can keep these systems going.

However, a new generation of systems is reaching puberty. Some mutations in these make it so drivers are isolated and so the drivers can survive system bugs. On top of that the world these lucky bastards live is plentiful, with awesome resources such as IOMMUs which enforce peace in the wilderness, keeping each tribe of hardware golems away from killing each other while poisoning the food supply of the elites living in the userspace district of the city.

And these new systems aren't like the aberrations (the so-called Mach generation) which alchemists concocted a long time ago. Those promised a lot of things but had such sluggish IPC that they could barely walk, and those that tried putting them to work ended up giving up (Windows NT, MacOS X, HURD) and going for an hybrid approach instead which doesn't do driver isolation and so is barely any better than the necromancers's favorite.